Showers of Blessing

This morning, I spent some time meditating on how blessed my life has been. It doesn't take much musing on my part to be overwhelmed.

At the time, I happened to be taking a shower (TMI?), so the metaphorical connection was obvious. I
recalled the hymn, "Showers of Blessing". I began to realize that each drop out of the showerhead could symbolize a blessing in my life. The shower dumps out a healthy amount of water during the course of its usage. The metaphorical expression seems to refer to abundance--a quantity beyond counting, beyond recording. It's a great picture, if you think about it. Understanding helps if you have an "attitude of gratitude", a thankful heart that realizes that the goodness of God in your life is undeserved and unmerited and hinges on His goodness alone and nothing we've done.

It's all good. And lest you believe I live in some idyllic world, I do not. I've had my share of heartache, difficulty and pain. Yet, as Job told his wife, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” True, Job. True, that. I accept the trouble, knowing that the good far outweighs it. 

There's no good place to start. It's all around me. My life, my wife, my children, my new granddaughter. It's all good. It's all blessing. The bad stuff? It's still there, but it reminds me of the world I live in, not the God I serve. It reminds me of what I could be, not what I am. It shows me what life could be like without God's hand of blessing in my life. 

Know this: If I die today, I die a contented man. I die a thankful man. I die a blessed man. If I live for 20 or 30 more years, all the more. Blessed now means more blessed then. I have no regrets in my life. It's been good.

I casually said hello to a stranger some days back, throwing in the casual, "How are you doing?"

"Blessed and highly favored," she said. 

Amen, sister. Amen.

You Couldn't Do What I Do

"I couldn't do what you do."

Oh, how many times I've heard that one.

When I began working as a funeral home employee, I quickly realized that this profession was shrouded in mystery. Somewhere was a curtain, drawn between the stateroom and the Control Room where the Wizard moved levers, pulled chains and spoke into a microphone. Being allowed to pass back and forth through this curtain gave me a perspective that few people have.

We in the profession see dark things. We will often find ourselves literally up to our elbows in unimaginable situations, our goal in this gruesomeness being to create a situation or a picture of a loved one that is more positive than a previous image of pain, suffering, discomfort or loss of health and/or wits. It's not a perfect art nor a perfect science, but it is a little of both. In doing what we do, we fight against the Created Order. Most often, we win, but sometimes we lose. The human body, as it turns out, rebels against preservation after death.

Usually those who say those words assume every case, every family, is an emotional investment. If that were true, then who would want to do this job? Not me, for sure. Truthfully, there is virtually no emotional wear-and-tear in my life, profession-wise. It's a job. Some might think I'm cold and unfeeling, but these aren't my family members and are almost always strangers. I believe the truly weird thing would be feeling such a connection with humanity that you were grieved in each and every one of these situations.

Babies, children, young adults, young married people, mothers and fathers of all ages, then of course the senior adults, having lived their lives completely--all types come across our tables or see our fires. Another common assumption is that I find myself undone when the "injustice" of a child's death or the death of a baby becomes business. Frankly, this is still just business. I may take a little extra care when I handle a baby. It is thankfully a rarer situation, and I know somewhere there are suffering parents, so I take a little more care than if it were an octogenarian whose death was wholly expected. A little more care, I say, as the attention I give those with full lives is also complete. I wouldn't be truthful though if I didn't admit to being a bit more deliberate with children.

As a Christian, my job gives me much to think about in relation to my beliefs as well. I assume that a majority of the deceased are indeed not going to a better place. After all, "the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many." (Matthew 7:13) God is the judge, though, and I will not profess to know the redeemed from the unrepentant. When you hear the testimony of family and friends during the course of the services, you will occasionally hear evidence that seems to support one or the other, yet I will ultimately not know. 

Yet as a Christian, I have an enduring confidence that, for whatever reason, God's will is done. The flaw in human thinking is in believing that we have the capacity or right to understand that will. I don't know why little babies die, or even if there is a "why". I do know that God is in charge and that what He wants will be done, and that this will is perfect and good, regardless if I understand or not. Therefore, thoughts of injustice rarely enter my thinking on the job.

It's true that what I do, regardless of my personal philosophy, is weird. I stand behind that curtain, pulling levers. I step out in my suit of nice clothes and hope that people are comforted. Sometimes, I want to say, "Hey, I embalmed your mother. Doesn't she look nice?", but I don't say that. Still, there are often times I stand next to a loved one on a stainless steel table, muse on my profession and think, "What a weird job I have." I could tell you stories. You would agree. 

Also, you could do what I do. I'm no saint and I'm no weirdo.  It's just a job.
 

My Collapse into Debauchery

This is quite a dramatic title for what will most likely be a lackluster account of my latter-day appreciation of adult drink, so I apologize if you later feel mislead.

My childhood and formative years weren't necessarily spent sheltered from the worldly side of life.

My father, for many years, drank recreationally. He was, for the most part, a beer drinker, who like most of his peers, appreciated a cool, sudsy one every now and then. I never saw him inebriated, though I heard stories of rare occasions when he had a bit too much after a night of dancing. There were some years when he and my mother would go out dancing with friends, most likely at clubs that ringed our particular county precinct, which was dry.

At times, we would also find bottles of stiffer stuff around the house, usually whiskies, bourbons or brandies, however, this was very rare. I remember an occasion where my father, my brother and I (both juveniles), and one of my father's co-workers were all crowded into the cab of a dump truck. As we drove down the roads, a bottle of cheap wine was passed down the line, my brother and I taking our share as well. Juvenile drinking and flaunting the open container law. Heady days...

My father's drinking days ended when he became a Christian. We were members of a Southern Baptist church, somewhat old-fashioned, and if the members of this church drank at all, they kept it well-hidden. Smoking was accepted, and the men of the church were known to sprint to the door after the closing prayer to fire one up. Gluttony was accepted as well, as the ample bellies around the sanctuary would evidence, but drinking was not to be accepted. The Fundamentalist belief that all alcohol was evil somehow took hold there in that conservative, yet reasonable, church.

Growing up in that environment, I bought into the party line as well. I was an unabashed teetotaler in my teen years, sanctimonious and proud, knowing that my way was the right way. I remember discussions with my Sunday School teacher in my late-teen years. She was a Presbyterian, so was liberated concerning drink. I would argue the dry perspective, using worn-out arguments that I had heard from others, few that could be reasonably supported by scripture or the normal rules of reason. She was kindhearted though, and didn't slam me in my ignorance as I should have been slammed.

Fast forward about 4-5 years: a recent college graduate and newly married, we would gather with our peers from our Newly Married Couples Sunday School class. There were a select number of our group that felt more liberated, but were most likely rebels against the party line. We would have small fellowships where wine or wine coolers flowed, and we felt edgy and real and untouchable. We remained in hiding, which also means we were ashamed to a degree. It wasn't a frequent practice, yet proved that I either doubted my earlier dogmatic position of dryness or I was sinning against my own conscience.

My dryness continued for some time. Some years later, I eased up on my convictions, having a glass of wine here or there, occasionally a little more. I rarely bought it for myself though. On the rare and few occasions that I went into liquor stores to buy something special for this or that, I felt like I was somewhere I didn't belong.

I'm not really sure when my total liberation took place, but now I find myself doing things that I would have never imagined 30 years ago. I go into liquor stores regularly. I am a member of the frequent shoppers club at one particular store that I favor. I still have no fondness for beer, but have found that I like some single-malt scotches, irish whiskies, vodka, rum and tequila. Vodka, rum and tequila are usually for cocktails and are rarely used straight-up. Whiskies are sipped and appreciated for their complexity, though I don't have the discerning palate in that area that I would desire. I've tried to perfect certain cocktails that I favor, usually using the tequila, rum or vodka, so I'm an amateur barkeep.

My adult children are "liberated", too, and their formation has been interesting to witness. One is like her mother, preferring the sweetly palatable girly drinks. Another likes beers, proving such tastes aren't inherited from parents. Another drinks drier wines and whiskies and other things more in line with my tastes, yet has attenuated her imbibing in her latter years by her own will power, choosing more often now to abstain. I respect this a lot. Self control is a rare virtue.

I still have a goodly number of friends that wouldn't understand where I am now. They are still in bondage to the notion that all drink is wrong. My belief on the matter is not without support or reason. I am where I am now because I came to realize that drinking is not wrong per se, and is only wrong or bad when used to excess. This puts it in the same class of every other acceptable activity on this earth. When we do not exercise self-control in our liberties, we are lawbreakers just the same. Being controlled by our appetites and using them to excess is the sin, not the general exercise. Granted, there are some things that are wrong in any application, yet drinking is not one of them.

In years past, I heard sermons, voiced by desperate pastors who sought to frighten the congregation into understanding that alcohol was the Devil's device. They would go to great lengths, stretching scriptural supporting texts to the breaking point in order to support their dogma. Biblical wine wasn't wine, they said, but was grape juice. Jesus turned water into Welch's. Greek vocabulary was often bandied about to give the sermons the authority of the original languages, which none of the rest of us knew. We believed them. We never drank.

It has always been a worry of mine that if I drank, I'd be excessive and therefore, a drunkard. Now that I do drink, I don't believe I'm excessive. I've never, in my entire life, been what I would consider drunk. Buzzed perhaps, and there are some that would say this is just the same, but never drunk. When even buzzed, I don't want to drive, which may prove non-drunkedness as few drunks have enough good judgement to say no to driving.

Why do I do it now when I did without for so many years? I enjoy it, for one. It's a common bond I share with my son-in-law, as well as with some new friends and my older children. None of us are presently over-users, and the ones that have been excessive in the past have learned their lessons from those events. All said, I have no regrets. It may yet prove to be that my drinking will give me common ground with certain people and open certain doors that would have remained closed. That may be wishful thinking, borne from a desire to validate my newfound hobby. I think not, but we shall see.

Writing: My History

My love of writing goes back quite a few years. Let's go back to the 6th grade. I hear the sands of time's harp-like sounds. Things are starting to lose focus...

In the 1974-1975 school year, I was in the 6th Grade at Tarkington Jr. High School. Our teacher was Mrs. Parker. Mrs. Parker was a sweet, kind-hearted woman, perhaps a little overwhelmed by our youthful exuberance and childish lack of self-control, but sweet and kind-hearted nonetheless. She taught English, both Reading and Writing. One of our assignments was a creative writing assignment in which she gave us carte blanche on topic. I don't recall who took the initiative, but either myself or my friend, Chris, wrote a story about warfare (our favorite topic at that time), the characters in the tale being us and our own classmates. She allowed certain individuals in the class to read their compositions, and this person (either Chris or myself) read their composition. It was a hit.

Thus started a frenzy of composition in our class. Like-themed stories starring people we knew was the genre of choice, and Mrs. Parker allowed us to read as many of them as we liked. Must have taken quite a load off of her when it came to scheduling class time. I became a prolific raconteur in this genre, and this, along with my love of Hardy Boys novels, set me on a course which continued to today:  my love of writing.

In those days, I had great story ideas. You know the movie, "Red Dawn"? Russians/Koreans invade middle America and are driven back by red-blooded, militant American youths. I wrote that story first, at least the framework for the story. Had I written it as a screenplay and submitted it to the right studio, I would have been the one with the credit instead of Kevin Reynolds.

There were later works, nothing significant though until after college. I wrote accounts of two different river excursions in 1988 and 1989, the Trinity River Expeditions. These writings saw very limited circulation ("limited" = 4 copies). I had other good ideas that never materialized. I wanted to write and photograph a story commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Trinity Test, the first atomic bomb explosion. The 50th anniversary was in 1995 and I just never got around to it. It would have involved travel to New Mexico, which I was unprepared to do. Uncommitted to the idea would probably be a more accurate summation.

In these formative years of my wordsmithing skills, I was also budding as a photographer, making myself what National Geographic editors once called the "double threat"--both writer and picture-taker.

My writing feels most at home on a computer. There it can languish, unpublished, in the form of zeroes and ones and no one will know the difference. However the new millennium brought with it new freedoms for the writer: weblogging. Frustrated, unpublished writers could now self-publish without the shameful smell of desperation attached to vanity press print publications. Everyone can publish web-based works, good, bad and horrendous, and skill has nothing to do with it. All you needed was enough misplaced self-confidence to click a "Save" button and boom: you were published.

For me, writing isn't about getting published. It's about how telling stories makes me feel. I enjoy writing, and I often enjoy reading what I've written. There has to be something unhealthy and narcissistic buried in this admission, but it's true. I find myself reading things I've written and admiring them, not necessarily because I've written them, but mostly because I enjoy the way the words fit together or the feelings they evoke. Perhaps the subconscious knowledge that it's my writing steers this, but there's probably no way of knowing whether that's true or not.

Right now, I have several projects I'm working on at different times. Usually my dedication to each project hinges on what I feel like writing. The projects are rather varied, the common theme probably being they're all fiction. I have a great screenplay idea that is only partially done. The stories are most likely unmarketable, but I've enjoyed writing them. As I've said, I like reading them, too. That doesn't necessarily translate to others also liking them, but I have at least one fan.

My favorite topic involves post-apocalyptic drama, realistic enough so as to not involve vampires or zombies. This is also my most complete work. I've also started writing a crime thriller about a bomber targeting adult bookstores. I've started writing a story about a bunch of Christians escaping persecution by living in a remote wooded camp during the Great Tribulation. There are other things in the works, but I can't recall with specificity any others.

I've written a lot of other things that are more short works, primarily weblog posts. Short, topical treatments, primarily my thoughts on an array of different things. I'd like to say that they're well thought out and cohesive, but that's probably not for me to accurately judge.

So, boiling all of this down, I ask: is there a place for writing that is unmarketable, unsellable, and, in some cases, unreadable? Some would say 'yes'. The concept of journaling has long been heralded as an essential element in the writer's life. I wonder how weblogging compares to journaling? Does the element of someone being able to see it skew the motivation for writing? Journals, being for the most part diaries that no one else sees or reads, are usually written for the sake of getting ideas down or getting them out of your head. It's also a tool to hone the discipline of writing. For me, knowing that virtually no one will read my weblog, it primarily serves the same purpose.

 The chances are pretty good that I will slip away into eternity without becoming published in the professional sense. I imagine that there are many good writers out there that will never be published, and I believe there are plenty of mediocre and bad writers that are published. At a certain point, motivation and drive make it happen and some good writers just aren't hungry enough. I'd like to think that it's humility that keeps many of these writers in the shadows. There seems to be a certain amount of self-love that drives creative types to get their stuff out there. Disregard the fact that this comment seems to be self-serving on my part, as I am one of the unpublished.

It's been a secret dream (not so secret anymore) that I could make a living in my later years researching and writing. I no longer put much stock in dreams, so we'll have to hope that my greatest works may be somehow unveiled posthumously and will provide a nice residual for my progeny. That or those zeroes and ones will, at some point, simply disappear.

Leaping and Bounding

There's nothing that will make you sound more like an old timer than going on and on with comparisons to the "old days". Whatever the "old days" were, they were generally a time when everything was less expensive, less complex and less technical. For me, the "old days" were the '60s and '70s, definitely a time of simplicity, technology-wise. I can't remember a single device, appliance or tool common to most households at that time that a child couldn't operate, save perhaps a sewing machine. Sewing machine technology hasn't changed much because engineers haven't yet found a way to make it more complex than it already is.

Fostex 4-Track Cassette Recorder

I've always been technically-minded to a degree, so as I learned about certain technologies, I wanted
to get my hand on them and learn to use whatever it might be. When video recording began to mature in the 80s, I wanted to learn video editing, yet it usually required expensive hardware that I didn't nor was likely to possess. Video mixers and multiple playback/recording decks were essential, and only the most rudimentary editing was possible unless you had access to the high-dollar hardware that only professional studios and television possessed.

When I learned what multi-track recording was in the 70s, I wanted to experiment with this as well, learning the technologies that the big boys used to make all those hit records I loved. This, too, was out of reach. I didn't even own a 4-track recorder, one of the first accessible multi-track devices. The 4-track was an advanced cassette deck that would record using all 4 of the tracks on a conventional cassette tape, allowing you to create overdubs and to bounce tracks. This was big technology on a small scale.

Multi-track recording progressed. Hardware improved. Stand-alone multi-track machines were developed that used hard-disk and the CD-burning technology common to personal computers, allowing home studio amateurs to mix-down to CD, the going media format at that time. Companies like Fostex, Boss and Tascam were making some happening units then, yet I still found myself on the outside.

My first video capture card, now an obsolete dinosaur.

The strides that personal computing took in the new millenium made many of these things accessible. Those were sweet, heady days for me. I saw all of these technological dreams materialize right before my own eyes.

In the early 2Ks, I built my first computer, a Pentium-based machine (the first machine I built, not the first I owned). Though I don't recall the specifics, the RAM was in the sub-GB range and the HDD wasn't much over that, probably in the 40-60GB range, still spinning at 5400 or less. XP was the OS of the day and was new on the scene.

I had discovered the accessibility of video capture hardware and editing software and was determined to build a machine that I could use to edit video. I bought an entry-level capture card and Sony Screenblast Movie Studio,  Ver. 1.0 (now called Vegas Movie Studio after its parent). Vegas was software that gave me the ability to do complex things, such as video layers and multiple audio tracks on my own computer. With Vegas, I learned the simple beauty of a fade when compared to the coarseness of a whole catalog of other transitions, all which now seem utterly silly and amateurish. I have been able to make quite a few passably good DVDs with Vegas, my limits usually being my own skills and creativity.

I also later bought a Firewire audio interface and an entry-level DAW, Cakewalk's Music Creator. This was my entry into multi-track home studio recording. I've progressed through two versions of Music Creator, to ProTools and am now using Sonar X2 Producer. I love recording technology a bit more than video technology, as cutting edge results for video are out of reach and progressing faster than I can keep up with. Recording, on the other hand, gives me professional-level results with the hardware and software I have, the limits again being my own skill and creativity.

There's a whole lot more to be said, too, if I should include digital photography and Photoshop, but I'll leave that for another time. 

Technology, while it hasn't led us to Utopia nor has it solved any of the truly weighty issues of our time, has liberated creative people in many different ways. These are but two ways technology has liberated me and given me access through doors previously locked.

For the Love of Good Music

There was a lot going on in the year 1976. It was the Bicentennial year for the good ole US of A. I was in the 7th Grade, on the cusp of manhood. My musical tastes were blossoming into what would be my preferred tastes throughout the rest of my life, or at least thus far.

The album package and poster

My loving parents, especially my mother, supported my new musical tastes. At this stage, they were still rather innocent. I had not yet happened upon Aerosmith, Mahogany Rush or Van Halen, so she was unworried and unconcerned. One Christmas, they bought me a record player. It was just that--nothing more or less--yet I loved and used it. I was a cheap, inexpensive unit, too, but that didn't bother me either.

I had been a Beatles fan since I happened upon a few of their 45s that my dad had brought home with many others he had found in an old, defunct radio station. I had bought a couple Beatles anthologies on LP afterwards, and I can think of no better music to cut one's teeth on. Regardless of what you think about the Beatles today, they were unarguably the best songwriters of that era, perhaps of all time, at least in the pantheon of rock and roll. Given this fondness, I also liked the post-Beatles work of Paul McCartney.

In 1976, McCartney and his band, Wings, toured the US, recording a live album in the process. It was a great work, covering the entire live set and spanning three LPs, titled "Wings over America".  I purchased it as soon as possible. The price then was princely for an LP; I'm thinking it was about $11-12. Yet as it was three records, not one, it seemed a better deal. The album itself was a work of art, as many were in those days. The centerfold was a painting of the band on stage, showing all members of the band. I later discovered it was derived from a series of photographs of the individuals taken on the tour, later rendered as one work. You notice when seeing it that something is missing:  a bass player. This oversight was certainly not an issue for the artist and bugs probably no one else but me.

The Centerfold

I listened to WoA over and over and over again. It became, and remains, one of my favorite pieces of music. The guys playing with McCartney at that time were among the best, and he was at the top of his game as a songwriter, arranger and musician, not to mention as a showman.

Another poster included with the album

If my recall is correct, at one point one of the disks was damaged by heat, rendering the set unplayable in its entirety. WoA eventually disappeared from my rotation. Over the following years, I tried to find it on CD, and was unsuccessful. The copies I did find were overpriced, fetching $50 for the 2-disc set. Fast-forward 25 years...

A couple of months ago, I learned that WoA had been re-released on CD. Best Buy was selling a special package of the set which included a bonus disc of recordings from the WoA tour recorded in San Francisco. On the way home that evening, I dropped by Best Buy and snatched one up.

Even now, these weeks hence, I love having rediscovered this album. WoA gave me a love and appreciation for live music which has endured until today. I'm not a huge fan of live recordings per se, but there are a few live recordings in my Top 100 list.

Here's to Memory Lane! May its pavement always be free of potholes!

Instagram Nation

I began using Instagram recently after having ignored it for years. One reason is that I like taking pictures, whether with a phone or a camera, so I thought it would give me a convenient reason to take more without having to lug my rig around or even have to worry about a pocket camera. Another reason is that I knew more and more people that were sharing images via Instagram, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

What I found is a free-for-all medium in which people are sharing images that range from stunning to mundane to "what were they thinking". What I learned is that creativity is not endowed to every person with a camera on their phone. The people I follow pretty much dictate the type of images I regularly see, yet just a general browsing through the "EXPLORE" page proves this observation to be generally true. I suppose that Instagram isn't necessarily a medium solely for creative application of the phone camera, therefore who am I to dictate how it should be used?

Here is a non-exhaustive list of photo genres I've seen on Instagram:

Cutest Instagram baby picture ever!  (© Kirsten Leigh)

1. Pictures of Food - I've been guilty of posting these occasionally. For some of us, our table is one of the few or only ever-changing scenes in our lives. However, on the receiving end, do we really care to see what someone is shoving in their cake hole?
2. Selfies - For me, the selfie has become the comic relief of Instagram. The classic, bathroom-mirror selfie is my favorite, where whoever is holding up their phone to capture their reflection as they pose in front of the bathroom mirror. That this is the same room where people poop and shower doesn't matter, I suppose. Where there is a mirror, there's an opportunity for capturing glamorous images of yourself. Now if you could only do it without your phone in your hand. Next time, try holding it out at an angle where you can crop the phone out, Ansel Adams. Also, is it just me hearing the Selfie shouting, "Hey, everyone: look at me! I'm insecure!"?
3. Household Projects, Crafts or Activities - This is the domain of the productive housewife. Taking photos of your newly organized sewing room, your latest culinary success or your most recent domestic coup will most likely only appeal to your also-competitive peers and to those who would love you even if you weren't looking to knock Martha Stewart off her pedestal.
4. Cute Things - This includes a myriad of subjects whose commonality is perceived cuteness. Babies and pets are the largest sub-genres. Baby photos have always been the same: cute only to those who have vested interests in the subject or those rare few who think all baby photos are cute. There are exceptions of universal cuteness, such as images of piglets in rain boots or this photo that I've borrowed.
5. Timeless Moments from Our Lives -  "Timeless", in this sense, means nothing to the general public, except perhaps that it means time stands still as we attempt to fathom why anyone would publish such a photo. However, since Instagram is a subscription/follower service, I suppose we don't have to look at images from people who consistently pain us with their arbitrary submissions.There's always the option to un-follow, or to simply ignore the bad for the sake of the good, should that ever come along. Caveat sectator.

As I've learned my way around Instagram and have discovered which protocols exist and don't exist, I've found myself posting photos that I've later deleted. If I look at one of my images and say to myself, "What the...?!?!", I imagine everyone else would be saying the same.  I now find myself trying more often to be more judicious about what I post and why.

What Instagram is doing is bringing the journalist in each of us out. We want to tell stories with photos and with short, pithy captions. Even if the subject at hand is my dull and boring life, I want to tell it in vivid color (or perhaps a randomly-placed black-and-white photo). The smart phone has leveled places that formerly were only accessible to people with computers and the internet, which were places formerly accessible only to journalists, editors and publishers. Technology has made self-publishing so easy that we all can do it. The questions I'm left with are: Do I have anything to say, and is anyone listening?